


This Unholy Empire

by TheEagleGirl



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, I....have never seen the Borgias, borgias au, but! I think it's good!, secret santa gift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 22:10:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13133250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEagleGirl/pseuds/TheEagleGirl
Summary: Their closeness with one another is unnatural. Sansa cannot remember when it started, only that between one day and the next she was leaning into his arms, tugging on his curls, pressing sweet kisses to the side of his mouth when he pleased her.





	This Unholy Empire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [burningveins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/burningveins/gifts).



> Bitchpack Secret Santa gift for Lola, who I know loves the Borgias! I hope you all enjoy it :)

Sansa returns to Rome with little fanfare. It is better this way. If father is able to obtain the annulment for her, it must not look as though they’ve celebrated. Still, rolling into the city she’s grown up in with the blinds pulled seems too much like she’s sneaking in, like she’s truly done something wrong, so she tugs on the curtains until she can see the cobbled streets of Rome once more—the merchants, the stalls, the barefoot children. She’s missed this more than she can say, when she’d been sequestered away with her husband. The smells, the noise, the gleam of the city just under the dirt of it…

In the country, at her husband’s home, there had been only silence, loneliness and open space.

Sansa sticks her head out of the carriage window and _inhales_. How she’s missed this. She’d feared that upon her return, she’d not _fit_. That the girl she was, with frilly dreams of princes and a marriage full of love, would not have left a space for the woman she’s become.

She needn’t have worried. This is still her home. And when the carriage rolls to a stop, she sees her brother waiting to welcome her.

 

 

  
“If I’d have known,” Jon says, and it’s all flooding back, this feeling of belonging she has whenever he’s with her, “I’d have killed him myself.”

“I had it handled,” Sansa says, muffled against the dark cloth of his vest. “For a bit, at least. He fell from his horse.”

“Harry the Hunter,” Jon scoffs, pulling away to touch her face. “Oh, sis, how good to see you again.”

Sansa’s eyes flutter shut for just a moment, and her face turns into his palm.

“I’d expected to see you in a cardinal’s reds,” she says, when she has composed herself.

“Black suits me more.” Jon steps away, offers his arm. Sansa takes it gingerly, lets him lead her into her mother’s villa. “Besides,” he adds, “we match today.”

“My marriage will be ending quite soon,” Sansa says primly, but she cannot help the smile that breaks through at the words. “I should appear to be in mourning.”

“You’d best control your face, then,” a voice says. Robb grins at her from the top of the staircase, and Sansa releases Jon’s arm so she can run to embrace him. “You look entirely too happy to be home, dearest sister.”

She hadn’t been, on the way here. Relieved, perhaps, but an anxious knot tied in her belly. Carefully, she smooths her face and takes Jon’s arm again. “Is mama home? I’ve a lot to tell her.”

 

 

  
Sansa hasn’t always felt this way about Jon. For most of her life, Jon was just her bastard brother—as though she and Robb and Arya at the time had not been bastards themselves. But their father legitimized them, claimed them even though he was a cardinal. Jon had never been recognized the way they had, and he’d gone in their father’s footsteps, become a priest at seventeen, cardinal at twenty. But once Father became pope and Robb became the head of affairs, taking Bran trotting after with him to learn politics, Sansa decided to spend more time with Arya. And along with Arya came Jon.

Their closeness with one another is unnatural. Sansa cannot remember when it started, only that between one day and the next she was leaning into his arms, tugging on his curls, pressing sweet kisses to the side of his mouth when he pleased her. Her mother did not approve, but no one said a word, not until her husband, in a fit of rage, had snarled that it was her brother she wanted in bed, wasn’t it? _Unnatural Stark blood_ , he’d spat. Sansa’s childlike innocence had soured then. For a while, she could forget Jon, if she tried. Podrick, the stable boy in her husband’s castle, had helped her forget, had helped her with her husband, even, loosening his saddle so he would fall mid-hunt.

She could always forget Jon when he was far away from her. But when he’s near…Sansa would fall into his embrace, feel the potency of his nearness. He understood her far better than Sansa would have thought anyone could, knew when she needed silence and distance, or distraction and nearness. For the past two years, Sansa has known that there is something between them. He knows too, if his lingering gaze is any indication, if his fingers tightening on their waist during a dance means anything.

 _It does_ , Sansa assures herself, fixing her beaded hairnet in the mirror. _I cannot be the only one._

Father does not want her to do this. He would never ask. But Sansa’s seen Lord Petyr’s eyes linger on her, knows how much he’d fancied her mother all those years ago.

Sansa looks very much like her mother.

“He’s threatening war,” Sansa had argued, only a half-hour past. Her father’s eyes could not meet hers. “If you cannot pay the price he demands, he will destroy the Vatican, he will wage war on the church!”

“Florence will come to our aid,” her father said, his jaw tight. But he’d conceded at last, known that Sansa was in the right—Lord Petyr would give up this brewing war if he was offered Lady Sansa, the pope’s beautiful daughter.

She has to wait, now. See if the proposal will be accepted, though she is nearly certain it will be. The few times she’s met Lord Petyr since she was a girl she’d sensed his interest. He’d not been subtle, and Sansa only prays it will be enough to sate his appetites for power. To have his wife be the daughter of a Pope…

“You cannot do this,” Jon says from behind her, and Sansa’s heart clenches.

“I must,” she says, turning. He’s never looked so distraught.

“We will find another way,” Jon insists, stepping forward to grab her arms. “Robb will muster enough forces. We will drive Petyr Baelish and his scum from Rome.”

Sansa wishes there was another way. She wants there to be.

“This family runs on ambition, dear brother,” she tries, her voice steely. A clean break, then. “Is it truly so difficult for you to understand I’ve added my ambitions to yours? That I’d like to be more than just a piece to be bartered off in our Father’s game?”

“He would _never_ ,” Jon begins poisonously, releasing her arms. “I’ll speak to him, Sansa, he would never give you to a snake like Baelish.”

 _Oh, Jon,_ Sansa thinks. Her foolish, noble brother—promised to God, to serve their father so loyally. He would not be able to lift a finger if Sansa were actually given away. But she loves him for wanting to.

“I must go,” Sansa says, her voice soft as air. “But, my love, if Petyr is…ungallant, as Harry was with me, I promise that you shall be the first to know.”

A muscle in Jon’s jaw ticks, and the tension ebbs from him slowly. “Only if I can come and kill him,” Jon says, voice rough. “If he is…ungallant.”

“But of course.” Sansa steps close to him again, darting her eyes ‘round the empty corridor of her mother’s villa before pressing a swift, close-mouthed kiss to Jon’s lips. She has done this before, this not-so-accidental press of mouths, but now…she lingers. Only for a moment, but the moment is enough for Jon to shudder, hand closing about her elbow.

When Sansa pulls away, she is breathing heavily for some strange reason, her eyes swimming. Jon merely presses his forehead to hers.

“He will not have me forever,” Sansa vows, eyes still closed. “You know what we Starks do to our enemies.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can follow me @visenyastargaryen on tumblr!


End file.
